When I first heard about Osama Bin Laden’s 2011 death was not from a news station, but from a friend’s tweet on Twitter. Soon after, everyone on Twitter was posting about the event, with dozens of different hashtags (#) emerging. This trend of quickly spreading information to the masses has gained momentum, especially in the recent 2011 uprisings in Egypt. In their International Journal of Communication article “The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions” (2011), Gilad Lota, Erhardt Graeff, Mike Ananny, Devin Gaffney, Ian Pearce, and Danah Boyd analyze how Twitter played a crucial role in the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Because I am more informed about the Egyptian uprising, that is what I will focus on. The International Journal of Communication is an online academic, interdisciplinary journal that mainly focuses on communication across the globe. All of the authors of this scholarly article are distinguished in the fields of communication, technology, and social ecology.
A brief history: To protest abuse by police, protestors decided to launch a large campaign on January 25, 2011, which was National Police Day. This campaign became known as #Jan25 on Twitter, and gained a lot of support. Because of Twitter and new media, protestors we able to be well organized. Soon after January 25th, many other protests came about in Egypt, using Twitter to spread encouragement and information to Egyptians as well as the rest of the world.
After taking a (mostly) qualitative approach, the authors found that the majority of information “flows” were started by individuals (most likely Twitter users and bloggers) as opposed to large organizations. As opposed to Tunisia, Tweets by both individuals and organizations gained many more responses. However, bloggers in Tunisia had a greater spread of information than those in Egypt.
In my opinion, Twitter was a very strong tool used by protestors in Tunisia and Egypt to gain national and global support for their causes. Imagine if Twitter existed during the American Civil Rights movement…can’t you just imagine Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tweeting his “I Have A Dream Speech” in increments of 140 words?
